In an earlier post I wrote about the fact that the key to using social media for holiday marketing is motivating consumers to share news about their purchases and their experiences with companies with their friends. Data shows us that this is what social media is ideally suited for. In that post I offered five ways that brands can write Facebook posts that their followers will want to share with friends. This post includes five more.

1. A Post to Promote Your Holiday Event

The holiday season is also known as “event” season. For businesses, there are open houses, promotional events and, of course, sales. Use a Facebook status update to promote your business’s holiday events this year. And take notes from the Gap!

In their latest holiday-event post, the Gap used hashtags (helpful for event attendees to use later), a call to action (“RSVP & join us”) and a link to a Facebook event page so users could RSVP. But here’s the biggest reason their status update excelled: The post’s photo is like an invitation and provides all the details for the event.

This sort of design helps cut down on user questions and motivates them to put the event into their calendars right away because they have all the information they need.

2. A Post to Incentivize Newsletter Signups

Businesses that want to drive sales through email marketing efforts this holiday season can use incentivized Facebook status updates to encourage users to sign up for the company newsletter. The brand Incase, a company that sells covers for technology products, does this really well.

Every week Incase hosts a giveaway and promotes it on their Facebook Page with simple, low-fuss status updates. Their fans love it!

During the holiday months, use your brand’s Facebook Page to try out this posting concept. It will drive engagement on your posts and allow your company to gather valuable information about your fans.

3. A Limited-Time-Only Promotion that Encourages Sharing

To encourage lots of sharing on status updates, make your business’s post announcements time sensitive.

The Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, for instance, recently used one of their Timeline posts to share a one-day-only deal with their fans. And their fans (and their fans’ friends) shared the post a lot. The deal provided lots of value and it was eye-catching — notice the bold red text bars.

Test posting a limited-time-only promotion on your brand’s Timeline this holiday season. And be strategic with which day you decide to host the deal. If Tuesday is a slow day for your business, post the deal on that day to get an extra surge of attention and sales.

4. A Timeline Promotion

In August, Facebook announced changes to their promotion guidelines. According to their update, promotions can now be hosted on a Page’s Timeline through a status update. There are many types of Timeline Promotions businesses can run: “Comment to win,” “Like to win,” “Comment and Like to win,” etc.

Social media marketing analyst Sierra Tierra recently hosted a “Comment to win” Timeline promotion. This kind of promotion is great way to get insight from your Facebook fans.

If your business wants to host a low-fuss Facebook promotion this holiday season, do a Timeline promotion, like Sierra’s. And for more Timeline promotion/contest ideas, click here to check out this awesome list of thirty ideas from Inside Facebook.

5. A Post to Promote Your Facebook App

One of the best ways to promote your Facebook app is to use a status update. The company Fitbit, which produces health-tracking fitness bracelets, uses Timeline posts to encourage their fans to check out their “Refer a Friend” app.

This holiday season, if you have an app on your Facebook page that hosts a special promo code or is being used as a way to boost Page Likes use a post to drive app visitors (you can even fan-gate an app to show specific content to fans only) .

Question: Which of these strategies have you tried? What were the results? Share your experiences in the comments below!

About Jim Belosic

Jim Belosic is the CEO of ShortStack, a self-service web app design tool that allows users to create custom Facebook apps for Facebook and external websites. Its interface provides small businesses, individuals, graphic designers, agencies, and corporations with the tools needed to build mini-websites within their Facebook pages that help drive user interaction and increase fan page likes.

About Amy

Amy is a social media strategist and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies. She helps entrepreneurs across industries establish strategies to maximize the power of social media and increase the success of their online marketing efforts.